ly set about
establishing business, accumulating wealth, and will very naturally
organize in self-defense, and in time rule the ninety-nine thousand
nine hundred and eighty others.

When just emerging from the shambles of two and a half centuries of
slavery and inforced ignorance, penniless and without experience, it
was a serious blunder to have placed the Negroes in such a position as
to make them responsible for the government.

They were not only without the necessary intelligence and experience
for its successful operation, but all the resources essential to its
maintenance were in the hands of the minority class, and they were
without the ability to compel any contribution for its support.

Placed upon the wrong track in the primary stages of emancipation, the
race spent its energy in trying to control the kind of government that
other people's business and resources made necessary, instead of
trying to acquire the elements which would have made it welcome as
part owners and rulers of that government.

Such conditions as resulted from the plans and policies pursued in the
rehabilitation of civil government, after the War of the Rebellion,
very naturally created great friction between the former master-class,
possessing practically all the business, wealth and experience, though
in the minority in many localities, and the former slave-class,
without business, wealth and experience, on the other hand.

The master-class determined that in self defense it had to organize to
repossess itself of governmental control, which was then in the hands
of the slave-class, and withheld its support from the government,
which the latter class was helpless to compel without the strong
compelling arm of the Federal government, which the peaceful and
considerate judgment of mankind would no longer sustain in maintaining
such conditions.

Whereupon all over the South where the ex-slave class controlled
merely, by reason of numbers, its power and influence failed, until
to-day it finds itself absolutely shorn of power, even so much as is
necessary to protect its property, family and life.

While it may be both unjust and unwise for a class in the condition of
the former slave class to absolutely control a government made
necessary by the resources of others, yet it is a cruel wrong to
deprive it even of that influence that is absolutely necessary for the
protection of family, property and life.

The paramount issue of Souther